photo by: Mike Yoder

Lawrence City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St., is pictured Thursday, July 7, 2016.

City leaders will soon discuss a new way of prioritizing infrastructure maintenance projects and other capital expenses.

As part of its meeting Tuesday, the Lawrence City Commission will provide feedback to city staff about new prioritization guidelines for the city’s Capital Improvement Plan. The guidelines are being discussed in preparation for the city manager’s recommended CIP for 2021-2025, which will ultimately be considered as part of the 2021 budget process. The changes have been made to help improve consistency and transparency, according to a city staff memo to the commission.

The change comes not long after the city’s recent resident satisfaction survey showed that residents were generally unsatisfied with major components of the city’s infrastructure. Though a large majority of respondents to the city’s 2019 survey said they were satisfied with city services overall, only 37% said they were satisfied with the maintenance of streets and utilities, as the Journal-World previously reported. Since the 2015 survey, satisfaction with the timeliness of street maintenance repairs and the condition of streets also significantly decreased.

For the purposes of the city’s CIP, a capital project is the creation or maintenance of a fixed asset, has a minimum total cost of $100,000 and a life expectancy of at least two years. Examples include work on streets, sewer lines and water lines, as well as the acquisition of land for public use and planning and engineering costs, according to the memo.

The new prioritization guidelines classify capital projects into one of three categories: one-time capital improvement projects; vehicles and equipment; and ongoing maintenance programs. The new guidelines include a new scoring process to prioritize the one-time projects, and continue processes for the other two categories.

The one-time capital improvement projects will be given a score out of 100 under a new method that evaluates them against nine factors. The nine factors comprise long-term planning, health/public safety, infrastructure, regulatory compliance, external funding, impact on operating budget, quality of life, location/time and equity/sustainability. The memo states that each department will score its projects using the guidelines, and a CIP committee will review the scores for consistency across departments.

As far as the other two categories of projects, the fleet manager will continue to review vehicles and equipment purchases, and departments will continue to review maintenance programs as part of their departmental operating budgets.

As part of the work session portion of its meeting Tuesday, city staff is asking the commission to review the guidelines and direct staff as appropriate. The commission will also take up items postponed from last week’s meeting as part of its regular agenda.

Because of technical difficulties with the live video stream, the commission postponed its meeting that was originally scheduled to take place April 7. Items that will now be considered as part of Tuesday’s meeting include an approximately $2 million incentives request from the Penn Street Lofts project and increasing funding for the bicycle boulevard planned for 21st Street, among other items. The full agenda is available on the city’s website, Lawrenceks.org.

The Lawrence City Commission will convene at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St. The city has asked that residents participate in the meeting virtually, if they are able to do so, using temporary meeting procedures put in place to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.